A groan ripped through me as her hips rocked against mine. She didn’t just lay there, waiting for me to hurt her. She participated. She encouraged.

My cock physically throbbed to be touched, to be freed, to be inside her.

I drove into her. My suit into her nakedness.

She moaned and accepted my ruthless kiss.

I yanked on the leash around her throat, reminding both of us of our places in this war. The dominant and the dominated. She was my conquest. She had not won. This was me taking what I should’ve taken the moment she landed on my island.

Maybe then I wouldn’t have my heart tangled with my desire.

Running my hand down her body, I arched my hips, fumbling at my belt and zipper.

My knuckles grazed her pussy, coming away with wet streaks of her need. My lust amplified to dangerous levels. My goddamn trousers refused to come undone. I needed to stop thrusting against her to get my cock free, but I couldn’t stop. Couldn’t deny the friction I needed. She needed. The inferno that consumed both of us.

I’d come in my boxers at this rate. I’d fucking cover myself in cum all because I couldn’t wait to climb inside this girl.

Our kiss turned deadly as her hands vanished to my belt. My brain short-circuited. Why would she help me ruin her? Why would she willingly let me take her final piece?

Because she feels it too.

It’s inescapable.

I grunted as her tiny hand cupped me.

I bit her lip so hard, metallic blood bloomed between us, sending our kiss from violent to feral.

I rolled onto my back, keeping her plastered to me, driving up with my hips, fucking desperate to be balls deep inside her.

She dug her hands into my chest like she had when she’d been high on elixir and struggling to get off. She rocked over me, her mouth lax, her skin luminescent, her hair totally wild.

A part of me cracked and fell.

Fell into an abyss that I daren’t fucking label.

But my heart knew what it was.

Death.

Death by a thousand acknowledgments that this girl would one day not only destroy me but also own me, kill me, consume me.

We both grunted like beasts, clawing to remove my clothing to finish this disaster. Our hands fought to rip my zipper down. Our chests panting for breath.

My back crushed grass, releasing the tart greenness into the air, the scent mingling with our musky desire. When my trousers finally released, a rush of savage need catapulted through my bloodstream.

I reached up and grabbed Eleanor’s throat, ready to throw her onto all fours. Ready to mount her. Fuck her. Kill us both with rapture.

But a dive-bomb of sharp beak and vibrant feathers aimed straight toward my eyes.

The sharpness almost punctured my pupil as I turned my head and threw my hands up to protect myself. The missile came again. And again.

I rolled, shoving Eleanor off me. The attack kept coming even as I stood and ducked the flurry of ferocity.

“Stop. Hey! Don’t do that.” Eleanor tried to help me despite everything I’d done.

Bracing myself for blindness, I blinked and locked gazes with my attacker.

And the world stopped for entirely new reasons.

“Skittles?”

The second I said her name, the tiny caique stopped her mission to murder me, squawking indignantly and flying to land proudly on Eleanor’s shoulder.

My mouth fell open.

What.

The.

Ever.

Living.

Fuck.

Chapter Eighteen

SULLY SWITCHED FROM RABID to frozen.

His lips still glistened from our kiss and his chest still rose and fell with tattered breath, but all hint of carnal connection vanished the moment his gaze locked on the tiny bird that’d chosen that moment to claim me as its own.

Little feathers bristled by my ear. A tune of disgruntled chirps fell quietly from its beak. It reminded me of a disapproving relative—slightly afraid, mostly disturbed, but defiantly protective.

Sully swallowed and shook his head, his eyebrows tugging low over his blistering blue gaze. Ever so slowly, he zipped up his trousers, buckled his belt, and dragged both hands through his hair.

His motions were meticulous and refined, his moods mercurial in their swiftness.

Why did he care that a parrot had befriended me? He had one. He loved Pika more than he was capable of loving someone of his own species. Why couldn’t I have a confidant like him?

I braced my shoulders, nudging my cheek against the feathered creature. The parrot puffed up, covering my cheek with beak kisses.

Sully actually groaned with dismay.

My heart flip-flopped. My stomach turned gooey. I’d gone from fighting my dangerous emotions toward Sully to falling madly in love with a bird.

Sully pinched the bridge of his nose as if warding off a headache. When he finally dropped his hand, a thin veneer of composure covered him, but something behind it ached with pain. His sea gaze snatched mine. “Care to tell me why you stole my caique?”

I balled my hands, activating blisters from rowing. He could take away my freedom. He could steal away my heart. But he couldn’t accuse me of theft when I hadn’t done so. “It followed me when I left in the kayak.”

“It?” He cleared his throat. “It’s a she.” A softness glimmered in his stare. “She came from the same clutch as Pika.”

I tasted something I hadn’t had before. Conversation. A glimpse behind the curtain that made up the man before me. “They’re siblings?”

“I suppose you could call them that.”

“Where did they come from?”

His lips pressed together, refusing to reply, but Skittles squeaked and flew around Sully’s head. She didn’t land on him, though. She returned to me, settling lightly on my shoulder as if she’d always been welcome there.

He sighed heavily as if pissed by this change of events, hurting by the fact I’d earned affection from something he believed was his own. “Fourteen years ago, I found her in a wire bottom cage.” His temper flickered, threading with his sudden gentleness. “I stole the eggs and hatched them. They’ve been with me ever since.”

I turned to stare at the tiny parrot. Her wing speared upright as she nibbled at the feathers underneath. She seemed perfectly content and trusting, when only yesterday she’d still watched me warily—almost as if she’d been judging me, examining me for any sign that I wasn’t worthy before deciding I was hers.

I’d never had a pet before—never had that bond between creature and human—but it wasn’t from lack of trying. I’d constantly begged my parents for any sort of animal to adore. A squirrel, hamster, cricket, frog, even a cow, goat, and pig. I’d already asked for the standard dog, cat, and rabbit only to be refused any of them. To me, they all deserved love and kindness—not just the ones sold in a pet shop but also the ones born for slaughter. That was probably why I’d become a vegetarian. I couldn’t separate the pets from the consumed. They were all the same.

I was exceedingly aware I stood naked before Sully, adorned by a single bird and his tie around my throat, but I ignored my vulnerability in favour of talking. If I could figure out what had caused him to become the way he was, maybe I had a chance of undoing the tangles around his heart. “Why doesn’t she hang out with you and Pika?”